The Hearts of the Jealous
by Syrinx
Summary: Theirs was a collision course starting from year one. Ashleigh/Mike, Ashleigh/Brad.
1. Sovereign

The Hearts of the Jealous

By Syrinx

Summary: Theirs was a collision course starting from year one.

Pairings: Ashleigh/Mike, Ashleigh/Brad

Disclaimer: All rights to the Thoroughbred series belong to Joanna Campbell and Harper Collins.

A/N: What would happen if Wonder hadn't hit her stride until she was four, taking her out of the Triple Crown entirely? What if she didn't meet the Prince until later? What would have happened then?

1. Sovereign (Brad, Year One)

It was reasonable to say that he would remember the day Townsend Prince was born not because the foal was clearly the most promising of Townsend Pride's first crop, but because the farm was running on generators for the third day in a row. Ice caked onto the downed power lines and glistened on the blacktop of the roads, keeping residents to their fireplaces and the horses indoors. The only things that worked reliably were the phones while the city diligently tried to set things back to normal.

Without power, the main house seemed to stumble back in time, relying on the fireplaces for warmth when the farm below swallowed all the generators could produce. The maids pulled out all the down bedding from the cupboards, waiting until the crisis was averted. Brad remembered that his mother had tilted her head when the lights went dark and immediately called for the car. She would spend the next few days at the Hyatt in Lexington.

The cold effectively made works uncomfortable, but the ice made it impossible. Robbed of his one thing to do in the morning, Brad took to sleeping in, lying prostrate in the pocket of body heat the down comforters provided. At some point, a maid would let herself into his room to build the fire back up, stoking it into a crackling roar that served only to lull him into a deeper sleep.

For the life of him Brad felt like an English lord, and it was a feeling he had every intention of clinging to while the power was out, but at eight o'clock on the third day of the power outage, someone woke him to tell him the news.

"Mr. Townsend," Maria was shaking his arm gently, whispering his name as though her aim was to rock him into a stupor rather than prod him awake.

"For Christ's sake, Maria," Brad mumbled into his pillow, pulling his arm out of her hesitant grasp and propping himself up on his elbows lazily. "Call me Brad."

"You know I can't," Maria said, her Spanish accent lilting under her breath as she continued to whisper.

"Can't or won't?"

"Doesn't matter," she shrugged. "Get up. Your mare is having her baby."

"Three Foot?" Brad asked, looking up at her and shoving his disarrayed hair off his forehead.

"That is the one," she said. "Mr. Townsend say to come quick."

"Fantastic," he grumbled, lifting himself up and throwing the covers off and onto the floor. Maria stooped to pick them up.

"Later, Maria," Brad barked, sending her scurrying from the room.

It took no time at all to dress. He remembered pulling on jeans and a shirt, a sweater, a fleece pull over, socks, wool socks, and boots. He was still freezing when he left the relative warmth of the house and nearly ran down the salted steps, fastening the zipper of his coat and seeing his breath steam in the air.

This was the moment they were all waiting for, and the damn mare had to pick now to give birth. That's what he was thinking as he tried to avoid the slippery spots on the salted path to the barn. Three Foot was a week late, her foal ready to drop for days, giving everyone fits as the weather kept sending storm after storm of ice across the Bluegrass. Despite his annoyance, Brad was tempted to break into a run. He'd been waiting too long to miss this moment.

In his haste to get to the broodmare barn, he found a patch of ice and slipped, landing on his back on the ice coated grass. It was not like falling into a snow drift. That would have been comfortable. This felt like falling on concrete. For a dazed minute, he stared up at the clear sky and tried to get his breathing back to normal, which would have been fine if not for his aching ribs.

Slowly he stood up and looked around. The empty silence of the farm was excruciating, but it beat having a whole legion of stable hands staring at him in mute astonishment. Standing up, Brad checked himself over, took two cautious steps back onto the path, and picked his way to the barn at a snail's pace.

When he got there, the foal was curled up in the straw. Three Foot was standing protectively over the bundle, licking and nuzzling and snorting her welcoming warm breaths over the baby's neck. Even thought it was wet, Brad could see it would be a chestnut. A narrow white stripe ran crookedly right down the middle of its face, and its tiny hooves were folded underneath it, one tiny hind pastern exposed and splashed with white. A flashy chestnut, just like its father.

"It's a colt," Clay said over the hum of the generators. He was beaming, patting Brad on the back right in a place where he knew a bruise would be forming from his fall. He tried not to wince.

"Healthy as ever, I'd say," Tom O'Brien, the stud manager, said as he came out of the recently cleared breeding manager office. "But we'll get a vet out here to check up on him when this damn ice melts."

"Troy will come out this afternoon," Clay said, pushing away from the stall to confer with the other man. "The three foals born this week I'm not too concerned about, but some of the mares need checking in on."

"Holly is off her feed again," Tom sighed, nodding. "She's been damn persnickety this year."

"Make sure he looks in on her," Clay said. "When the new folks get here…"

The rest of his father's words blended together and faded away. He remembered that specifically, his inability to recall whatever Clay was saying or if he should even be paying attention. The mare was licking the rump of her colt, casually nudging him and tipping him off balance as he tried to get his spindly legs underneath his slender back. The colt toppled twice, and lurched back up each time, finally standing on his own on his third try, blinking with astonishment at the world around him.

Brad gripped the stall door in both hands, his eyes trained on the colt that was carefully sorting out the complicated process of walking. The mare snorted and lifted her head, tossing her unruly red forelock off her eyes as she gave Brad a look that he smiled at.

"Don't worry, babe," he told the horse, looking back down at the foal. Three Foot was a big mare, ruthlessly protective of each of her foals. Some of the broodmare grooms attributed it to her slight lameness, but all of them knew not to push her around when she had a baby by her side. Brad stayed where he was and studied the pair, wondering just where this new foal would stand among his stakes running half-siblings.

The mare went back to her job, and Clay returned to his son, a wide grin seeping back onto his features slowly at the sight. The foal tottered toward the stall door, sniffling and rustling in the straw.

"So what do you want to call him?" Clay asked, leaning one arm against the side of the stall.

Brad looked at the colt, who was peering up at his dam with big brown eyes. The mare moved around the foal, laying her ears flat at Clay when she felt he was leaning too close. Brad chuckled softly, knowing the mare was going to be a bear about this one.

"Let's wait on a name," Brad heard himself saying.

"Take your time," Clay said. "A colt like this one will need a grand name."

The foal, still damp but strong on his feet, nudged around his dam's belly, finding with keen precision what he was looking for by instinct. Brad didn't say anything. He leaned against the stall door and settled in, content to watch.

The generators continued to hum in the background.


	2. Lilliputian

2. Lilliputian

It smelled like the earth. Like grass and wet mud. Everything was fresh after a spring storm, rain water clinging to the bright green grass like dew on an early morning. The horses that stayed out in the shower were still damp, the painted fences of the paddocks still dripping. Her shoes were soaked around the edges of the plastic soles, and she shivered a little despite her jacket. Her feet would be cold and damp later, but she couldn't seem to force herself to move, not when her filly was out there, being put to what seemed like her umpteenth test in her short lifespan.

"You can't baby her from this side of the fence, missy," Charlie said, walking by and pausing next to her, taking off his hat to brush it impatiently against his knee before shoving it back on his bald head.

"I know, Charlie," Ashleigh said, shivering again. Her feet were damp and cold, probably due to the water seeping through her socks. "I'm just worried about having her out there."

"She's a horse," Charlie said bluntly. "She knows more about being out there than you do, and I guarantee you she's not worried about it."

Ashleigh bit her bottom lip and nodded, but still failed to move. The filly still looked so small, her legs like delicate spindles. Compared to the other foals, some nearly three months older, it was clear that the farm nickname for her rang true: the runt. Ashleigh pressed her lips together stoically, making herself remember the name Tom O'Brien had called her just a few short days ago, when the filly still hadn't been outside of the barn: Wonder. She clung fast to that name, remembering it whenever someone called the filly a runt; whenever Brad, the impossible heir of the farm, gave the filly a sideways glance and a sneer. Wonder. Wonder Wonder Wonder.

"Do you really think they'll keep her?" Ashleigh asked Charlie, putting her hands on the second to top board of the fence, not caring if it was still wet.

"Townsend indicated he'll more than likely keep her on," Charlie shrugged. "She may not be a racing prospect, but her dam is pensioned now. Holly mostly threw colts – a few nice ones once they were gelded – so a filly would be desirable to the breeding side of things."

"She can do more than be a broodmare," Ashleigh said adamantly. "She could race, couldn't she? Why wouldn't they at least try?"

"They'll try," Charlie assured her. "She'll be put through her paces, but considering the way she started out, she won't see tack until after most of the rest."

Ashleigh looked back at the little filly – Wonder – watching her try to keep in step with a much larger bay colt. The bay could easily run circles around Wonder, but was holding back, seeming to prefer taunting her than blowing her away. She had to remind herself that the filly wouldn't always be like this. She would grow into an awkward yearling and then into a beautiful adult, but there was the chance that she would always be small. Her stride might always be short. She might be nothing more useful than the broodmare Mr. Townsend wanted her to be, and why would that be so bad?

_She deserves more_, Ashleigh thought. _She'll have more_.

"Take your mind off it," Charlie advised, although it sounded more like the bark of a command. "You'll worry yourself sick before she's even got a human on her back."

Ashleigh nodded, taking a step away from the fence and hearing the squish of sodden turf under her feet. Holly would take care of Wonder now. In the paddock they were just horses, just foals and mares enjoying the cool spring day. There would be a time for worrying later.

She walked with Charlie back up to the barns, dragging her heels through the muddy gravel.

"Dominator could use a good gallop," Charlie said, giving Ashleigh a look out of the corner of his eye as she kicked at one of the irregular gray rocks. "And you could use to get your mind off of things. Why don't you take him out?"

Ashleigh doubted it was possible to think of anything besides Wonder, but she nodded and trooped off to gather Dominator's tack. As soon as she was out on the trails, head up and heels down, with the April breeze in her face, she found that she was wrong. Her mind was blissfully blank, filled with the sound of Dominator's hoof beats as they cantered up a rise.

Once they were on the trail that did a winding semi-circle around the farm, Ashleigh relaxed. Dominator continued his ground-eating canter, rolling with collected ease through the thicket of trees that bordered the large pastures. Most training was done for the day, the horses turned out or in their stalls, leaving the rest of the farm to Dominator and Ashleigh to do with as they pleased.

Rounding a corner, her carefully developing peace shattered into little pieces. Further up the trail, walking back like he had all the time in the world, was Brad Townsend stationed on an exhausted dark bay colt. Ashleigh started, her reaction so sudden that Dominator shied, skittering nervously across the width of the trail and coming to a plunging, bone-jarring halt mere feet from Brad, who'd pulled his horse as far to the side of the trail as he could.

"Were you planning to go barreling past me, or run me over?" Brad asked, moving his horse cautiously around her and stopping him in the middle of the trail, looking at Ashleigh warily.

"Neither," she snapped. "He spooked."

"What are you doing on him, anyway?" Brad asked, looking over the old gelding appraisingly. "Isn't he too ancient to haul around out here?"

Ashleigh looked down at Dominator, unconsciously twining her fingers through his dark mane at his withers. The gelding was certainly old, but he was in better shape than most horses she'd seen at his age. Spending the majority of his life as a talented stakes runner and pace horse kept him fit and more than capable to haul around on the trails.

"He's fine to do anything," Ashleigh said defensively.

"Says the girl playing nursemaid to a hopeless foal and harboring delusions of grandeur," Brad said, a half-smile playing at his lips. "That's not surprising."

"She's not hopeless," Ashleigh said quickly.

"You would have some example to prove this?" Brad asked.

"She's alive, isn't she?" Ashleigh replied scathingly. "Besides, Charlie says…"

Brad cut her off with a laugh. He leaned over and rested his hand on his colt's neck, grinning over at Ashleigh. "Please, tell me what that crazy old man has to say. I'll have something to laugh about for weeks."

"Your dad will want to keep her because Holly is retired," Ashleigh said boldly, feeling her courage swell as the words poured out of her mouth. "He wants to keep the bloodline, and Wonder is his only chance to do that."

"So that name is sticking, huh?" Brad said, selectively ignoring everything else. "It's fitting to a point, but I think Midget or Pygmy would work better."

"She's small," Ashleigh acknowledged. "That doesn't have to mean everything."

"It tends to mean a lot in this business," Brad shrugged. "Just don't get your hopes up, Griffen."

"Don't be surprised when she proves you wrong," Ashleigh retorted.

"I guess we'll see," Brad said, turning his horse and looking at her over his shoulder. "Don't let that old nag run away from you. He might have more spunk than you're used to."

Brad touched his heels to his horse's sides and the horse picked up an effortless canter, leaving Ashleigh to stare after him. Rolling her eyes, Ashleigh spun Dominator around and urged him forward, galloping as fast as she could in the opposite direction.


	3. Auspicious

3. Auspicious

_The Prince_.

It's not the most original of names, and that he will readily admit. Of the list of names the farm submitted, their last choice came through the victor, and to the victor go the spoils. Townsend Prince would not be denied anything. In the fields, he was the dominant yearling, and on the track, he was the one that attained no less than perfection. Every step he took was the correct one, every lesson learned was applied. Brad could do no more than stand at the rail and watch, astonished, as his yearling skipped through the paces and left the others in his wake.

"You must be so proud of him." A breathy female voice. He reluctantly pulled his gaze from the chestnut colt to the girl at his side, noticed the breeding manager's daughter as if through a haze of semi-clarity. Caroline. The breeding manager's _other _daughter. Not that one, never that one.

"I think that's a given," he said, affording her one patented smirk and then looking back at the track. Prince was going to the front, his copper body red with sweat while muscling through the group of gangly colts in his largest test to date, going three-quarter speed around the track. It was the middle of an Indian summer, and the horses were the colors of the leaves that had been falling to the ground. They were sweaty and dirty and eager to go faster still. The Prince was schooling them, taking the lead and romping toward the finish line.

"So what's next?" she asked, revealing her ignorance and reminding him that she doesn't know any more than Caroline possibly could.

"We'll run trials in a few weeks," he said, "once it starts to cool down. Two furlongs, maybe four for Prince. Maddock will set it up."

"Will you ride him?" she asked, shifting her weight toward him, an unconscious move he notices completely. Caroline acts oblivious, shoos a few errant strawberry blond hairs back from her eyes, watching him instead of the colt.

"I'm not exactly the right material for a yearling," he said. "It's better to have the lightest person we can get on Prince."

She smiled. "Maybe you should recruit Ashleigh," she said, all light-hearted and joking. "She couldn't be any more than ninety pounds. I swear she might hit puberty by the time she's twenty, if she's lucky."

He didn't find that amusing. Frankly, he found everything about what came out of Caroline's mouth disturbing, and so he muttered a response – "Like hell." – before pushing away from the rail. She followed him, scurrying to catch up.

"Of course," she said quickly. He doesn't pay her any attention, watching Prince come back to the gap. Craig was all grins, the horse was bouncing on his toes. Another group of horses, the group of late bloomers and culls, was waiting their turn. He saw the filly among them, the girl standing with the reins fisted tight in her fingers.

Usually, he would go back up to the barns after the works, see after the Prince, make the horse's poor groom half mad with his hovering, before heading off to school for the day. This day, with Caroline standing next to him, he changed his mind.

"I'm liking what I'm seeing," Maddock said while the yearlings filed off the track, the Prince the last to depart. Craig jumped down from the colt's back, patted Prince's shoulder and threw that big grin over his shoulder to Brad, who was too busy staring at his horse to give much notice.

"Are we looking at a trial soon?" He can't help asking. The colt is ready, is more than ready. Maddock fixed him with a considerably hard look.

"In a week or two," he said. "He'll be in the first group."

Brad said nothing. The Prince _was _the first group, and everyone knew that much. Still, the colt hadn't galloped under saddle yet, hadn't learned that lesson, and he's willing to wait for the show. The colt moved on, swishing his luxurious amber tail. Craig jumped up on a towering filly, a young thing that hadn't quite figured out how to make her legs work in tandem. The girl buckled her helmet, looked sick with worry, and drew the reins over the filly's neck. The old man stood next to her and gave her a leg up into the saddle, patted her knee and said something Brad didn't particularly care to hear.

They walked out on the track, the girl's lips constantly moving, the filly's ears pricked back in an effort to remain concentrated. Their efforts were an abysmal failure.

This group, the late bloomers and the culls, had low expectations. The expectations were only to walk and trot in a group, learn the mechanics of moving amongst other horses, decipher how to slip through the cracks and take the lead, how to press against the rail, how to move on the outside of the pack without running down the middle of the track. The filly didn't understand any of this, looked lost, kept her head craned high and her ears flickering between full alert and full blown panic.

"I don't know how she has the determination," Caroline said under her breath, her attention on her sister. Her hands cupped the rail gently, and he looked at her curiously, wondering how she could say such a thing.

"The filly is a lost cause," he said, shrugging. "Anyway, one maiden race and she'll be a retired broodmare. If she gets that far. Ashleigh can work on her all she likes."

He saw Caroline tense, her muscles absolutely rigid. She was memorizing his words, he realized, prepared to ferry them back to her sister. Sisters talk; siblings talk. He wouldn't know seeing as how his disappeared long ago. He didn't care, he realized. Let her talk all she likes, it didn't make his words any less true. Then she blinked and looked up at him, saying the last thing he expected.

"Are you going riding this afternoon?"

"I always do," he said shortly, annoyed. Pestered. Caroline smiled and brushed at her hair again. It kept drifting across her eyes in the breeze, and he wanted to brush it away for her just for a second, so she'd stop fiddling with it.

"I was thinking of taking it up again," Caroline said. "Riding, I mean. I just don't think I should go out alone. Would you mind the company?"

_Take your sister,_ he thought. _Make sure she doesn't run anyone else over on the trails._

Instead he shrugged. "Why not? I'll be in the barn by three."

He left her looking after him, the hair in her face again. He completely missed the filly plunge sideways and into the horse to her outside, spooking at nothing, nothing at all.


	4. Irremediable

4. Irremediable

_The Wonder._

Ashleigh's Wonder was the only name the farm bothered to submit with the registration paperwork on the filly. Ashleigh tried not to let this bother her, so she commonly told herself it was just a foregone conclusion. Tom O'Brien's name for the foal had stuck, and Ashleigh had no reason to be disappointed. _Wonder_. It was a good name. It was fitting. It was true.

It did not stop Ashleigh from worrying. When the filly spent most of her yearling season grazing among other late developing fillies, she wanted to know when the trainers would come for her. She worried that Wonder was being forgotten. She voiced her rising fears to Charlie, who only told her to bide her time. The trainers, he assured her, would definitely come.

When they came she was afraid they would handle the filly all wrong. Wonder was changing before her eyes, growing and shedding off the friendly foal antics of the summer previous. She stepped lightly through her paces, dodging and missing her cues. Ashleigh watched when she could, clung to the rail of the round pen, fought like an overprotective mother for her say in a wayward offspring's uncertain future.

She didn't know if she was going to get anywhere. Wonder, although treated with all the patience Maddock could muster, was certainly on no fast track. Ashleigh could only look at the training oval and try to push down the rising feeling of impatience, of injustice. She didn't want to yell that it wasn't fair, but it seemed like it was the only thing she dreamed of doing. She looked at Brad, who had eyes only for the Prince and wanted him to know how deeply unfair this was. She knew he'd only laugh in her face, and what was worse was she knew she would deserve it.

"I want Ashleigh to handle her first," Maddock said, completely out of the blue. Ashleigh looked up from the aisle and at him like she hadn't heard him right.

"Are you listening to me, Ashleigh?" Maddock asked, standing outside the filly's stall, one hand on the door as she gaped at him. "You've been hanging around here all summer, Griffen. I might as well put you to use."

"Oh," was all she said, stumbling forward and meeting him at the door.

"Have you done this before?" he asked her, looking at her intensely, as if he could pull the answers from her head before she could speak them.

"No," she said quietly, and cleared her throat. "No."

"I'm going to give you a leg up and you're going to rest your stomach over the saddle," Maddock said. "If she tenses up, and you'll feel it, I want you off of her. Do you hear me?"

"Yes," she said, nodding and taking the helmet that was handed to her. She fitted it on her head, buckling it and following Maddock into the stall, where Wonder stood, tacked and ready for something she couldn't anticipate. Maddock lifted her up on three, and before she knew what was happening Ashleigh was balancing with all the grace of a sack of grain on Wonder's back.

"Whoa," she said, feeling the filly quiver uncertainly. She gripped the saddle with one hand, tried to keep her legs still, to reach over and stroke the filly's neck. That did it. The filly screamed, jumping sideways as Maddock hauled Ashleigh unceremoniously to the ground.

It wasn't their last attempt. It was just a beginning, by far the first in a long succession of failures. The filly wanted no part of Ashleigh's weight, and each time she came off, Ashleigh's greatest fear was that somehow the filly would connect her with the dreaded pressure on her back. Each time the filly turned to her with panicked eyes, instantly calming at the sight of her.

Persistence was the only thing that won out. Maddock, too busy to devote his time, allowed Charlie to take command, and by fall the filly was settled enough under saddle to take her first trembling steps on the track. During her tenth day of track work, after a nightmare trip around the oval leaving Ashleigh shaking like a leaf, Maddock pulled Wonder out of training, saying it was too soon.

"It can't be too soon," Ashleigh pleaded, not bothering to say that if they waited any longer, the filly would never race at all. That was the unspoken truth everyone already knew.

"Ashleigh, she needs to take baby steps," Maddock sighed on his way back to the training barns, Ashleigh struggling to keep up with his longer strides. "I've put her with the slowest group, and she's proving to need special treatment outside of that. I'm going to have to recommend saving her for breeding."

"What will happen to her if you decide to wait?"

"I have decided to wait," Maddock said, walking into his office, Ashleigh hot on his heels. "In the meantime she'll stay in her paddock, eating her head off."

"Let me work with her," Ashleigh requested. Maddock looked dubiously at her, as if she'd just said she was qualified to run in the Kentucky Derby tomorrow.

"Charlie can help me," she persisted. "She's too young to be bred next year anyway, and while we work with her she's no longer your problem."

"Ashleigh…"

"Wonder needs baby steps, and I can help her, Mr. Maddock. I know I can. If she doesn't improve, she won't, but this way we're at least giving her a shot to be more profitable for Mr. Townsend."

He smiled a little at that. "You catch on quick to how things work around here, kid."

Ashleigh blushed, and glanced down at her dirty fingernails, fighting the urge to push harder while he appeared to be deliberating. Instead she looked up at him, keeping her pleading eyes and respectful silence.

"Fine," Maddock said, waving a hand in the direction of the stable. "Just don't get yourself killed. If you take the filly out, I want Charlie with you. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," Ashleigh said, hardly able to restrain her glee.

"I don't want your father coming after me if you get hurt," Maddock said.

"I won't get hurt."

"That's wishful thinking, Griffen," Maddock told her. "Go tell Charlie."

She spun out of his office and raced down the barn aisle, only pausing long enough to give Wonder a kiss on the nose.

* * *

The news wasn't met with nearly the amount of enthusiasm as she wanted. Charlie was reserved, but then he was almost always reserved, if not pessimistic. Her parents, having been prodded into letting her ride Wonder in the first place, only worried more. Caroline rolled her eyes. Linda had her doubts. Rory was the only one who thought it was undeniably awesome. Those were his words.

"One thing we're going to work on right now is that seat," Charlie barked at her during their first ride on the trails. To her surprise, Charlie had no intention of working Wonder on the training oval. To her further surprise, he seemed more interested in her riding than in Wonder.

"What's wrong with it?" Ashleigh asked, trying not to sound petulant. Charlie only looked at her and started to bark commands while they rode, and when they got back to the barn, Wonder was perky and thriving while every point in Ashleigh's body ached.

By the turn of the New Year, Ashleigh had to admit her riding was vastly improved. Wonder, by comparison, was the one receiving the schooling. Linda often came with them, shouldering Belle into the filly while they walked, crowding her into Dominator, making the filly learn that racing meant contact, meant pushing back and fighting for room, whether Wonder liked it or not.

The lessons were slow, were arduous. Charlie rotated the horses, rotated the riders, made Wonder carry Linda, Jilly, even himself, as much as she carried Ashleigh. The filly churned over the frozen ground in February, working through every weather condition, every situation Charlie could throw at her without the benefit of a training oval. Whenever Ashleigh questioned him about working on the track, she was met with stony silence or a command of keeping her patience. Ashleigh thought she had patience by now. She had patience in spades.

By March, while the ground was beginning its slow attempt to unthaw, Charlie said it was time.

"Nothing big," he said, sitting on Belle and holding Wonder's lead rope. The filly was breathing deeply, her nostrils flared for the scent of the upcoming spring. "If I see this animal bolting down the lane at a full gallop, I swear I'll have Jilly ride her for the next week."

"I won't go too fast," Ashleigh promised, hoping desperately she had the power to keep the strengthening filly in check. Wonder was nowhere near the strength of colts like the Prince, but she certainly could challenge Ashleigh if she wanted. Ashleigh hoped now would not be that time.

"I marked a spot further down the lane," Charlie said to her. "It's two furlongs give or take, and I'll go down there and serve as your marker. When I give you the signal, I want you to do what we've been practicing. Start her at a standstill, and gallop her down to me."

"Okay, Charlie."

He looked at her for a long moment and nodded, muttering something to himself as he trotted Belle down to their position in the field of brown grass. Ashleigh collected herself, turning the filly to face their intended path, feeling her heart beating chaotically in her chest. Wonder tipped her ears back, dancing with anticipation.

Charlie took off his hat and held it over his head, made sure he got Ashleigh's attention. His pale blue eyes were directly on her as Ashleigh prepared herself for the start. Then his hat dropped. Wonder jumped and took off.

Ashleigh tried to keep the filly straight, tried to keep herself balanced on top of her surging body. Wonder darted left, veered right, and finally ran semi-straight enough to slip by in a field sobriety test. In a moment of what Ashleigh could only assume to be carefree antics, Wonder kicked up her heels and booted her right out of the saddle. All she could remember was hitting the ground on her back, feeling the wind rush out of her lungs, and noticing that the sky was particularly blue.

"Damn it," she heard Charlie yelling. Wonder's hooves thundered off, dissipating until she couldn't hear them at all. She groaned and sat up, doing a quick mental check. Arms moved without pain, check. Legs, check. Torso, check. Bruises? Oh, there would be bruises.

"Are you okay?" Charlie asked her. They were alone in the field. Ashleigh didn't want to get up yet, but the filly was gone, running crazy somewhere. They had to get Wonder before Wonder literally ran into trouble.

"I'll live," Ashleigh grumbled, pushing herself to her feet and brushing the grass off the seat of her pants.

"What the hell kind of riding do you call that?" Charlie said, sitting on Belle and making no move to find their wayward horse.

"She…"

"She did what horses sometimes do," Charlie reprimanded her. "You should have ridden through it."

"I'm sorry," Ashleigh stammered.

"Little good that does," Charlie muttered, turning the mare and stopping when they weren't alone in the field anymore. Ashleigh turned to look at the trail head, her mouth dropping open at the sight of Brad Townsend leading her filly by the reins. He had that infuriating smile on his mouth, the one that Ashleigh wanted to smack right off his face.

He rode up to them, taking his time at a walk while Wonder impatiently stuck her head over his horse's withers, giving all of them the evil eye.

"Look who I came across on the trail," Brad called to them, ambling up while Wonder danced her hindquarters away from his mount, an ever patient riding horse from the family's private stables.

"That's a stroke of luck," Charlie said, spitting on the ground and giving the filly a wary glare. "Knowing that one she's more likely to run into a tree than take the easy way."

Brad's smile widened, stopping the horses next to them and handing Wonder's reins to Ashleigh. "Word to the wise," he said, "keep this one on a short leash. She looks a little flighty."

"Thank you," Ashleigh said, forcing the words out of her mouth. Brad only nodded, the grin becoming a smirk, irritating Ashleigh past the point of politeness. "Although I don't think I asked for your opinion."

That seemed funny, at least to Brad. "So you've moved her up to breezing?" he asked, directing his question to Charlie.

"Light work," Charlie nodded. "I wanted to see if I could get a time out of her this afternoon, however slow."

"Think you'll have another go today?"

"No doubt about it," Charlie said, looking down at Ashleigh, who tried not to make a show of sighing. She was happy they were going to try again. She was. She just didn't want _him_ to see it. Not yet. Not until they were ready to shock him so much he couldn't use any of those condescending, snide comments anymore.

"You ready, Ashleigh?" Charlie asked her, dismounting to give her a leg up into the saddle. Ashleigh nodded, boosted onto Wonder's back, and made a concerted effort to not look at Brad on her way back to their starting point.

When she stopped and turned Wonder, she saw Charlie and Brad sitting on their horses at their makeshift finish line. Both were looking straight at her. One determinedly, one curiously, full of bemusement. Ashleigh set her mouth and waited for the signal.

"Are you ready for this?" she whispered to the filly. Wonder tipped her ears back, hearing the words. "I am."

Charlie dropped his hat, and Ashleigh cued the filly forward. They galloped, veered and shifted, unable to stay straight, but she stayed in the saddle. Wonder, still bewildered about the purpose of it all, did as asked and little more. They made it to the marker, one baby step completed, far from shocking anyone.


End file.
